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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24148462">The Universe Spoke, but You Didn’t Listen, Did You?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_in_the_dark/pseuds/writing_in_the_dark'>writing_in_the_dark</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Listen [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gintama</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Comedy, GinHiji - Freeform, HijiGin, M/M, Parody, RIP Keiji Fujiwara, Romance, Sequel, Soulmates, rated M for a wet dream</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:06:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,320</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24148462</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_in_the_dark/pseuds/writing_in_the_dark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Two weeks after waking up with matching soulmate-identifying marks on their arms, Gintoki and Hijikata encounter each other again at the movie theater, where they are forced to confront what the universe is trying to tell them.</p>
<p>Sequel to <em>Listen When the Universe Tries to Tell You Something.</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hijikata Toshirou/Sakata Gintoki</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Listen [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740403</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>127</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Universe Spoke, but You Didn’t Listen, Did You?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I hope this sequel doesn’t suffer from sequelitis. If it does, please blame either GinHiji Week 2020’s Day 3 Soulmates AU prompt or the nature of sequels in general. I mean, have you seen <em>Iron Man 2</em> or <em>Thor: The Dark World</em>? They’re terrible. “But what about <em>Captain America: The Winter Soldier</em>? It's a sequel, and it's really good,” you’ll say, to which I’ll say be quiet and stop poking holes in my excuses.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="Erindefault">
  <em>Soulmates, soulmates, soulmates…</em>
</p>
<p class="Erindefault">The word runs through Gintoki’s head on a loop, like the world’s most useless stock ticker.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">It’s all because some damn advertising agency decided to put ads on people’s skin, of all the dumb things. A microchip that was implanted under his skin without his knowledge during a recent visit to the emergency room kicked on for a few minutes while he was asleep, displaying on his inner left forearm an ad for Unified Cinemas, the company that bought the old Ooedo Hall movie theater. If it wasn’t for the ads causing minor blood vessel damage, he never would have known it happened, but he woke up with a Unified-Cinemas-logo-shaped bruise on his arm.</p>
<p class="Erindefault"><em>Someone else</em> woke up that same morning with the same Unified-Cinemas-logo-shaped bruise on their arm. Gintoki would be in heaven if his <em>someone else</em> had been a hot married woman in her early forties. He imagines an older married woman with big tits showing him the Unified-Cinemas-logo-shaped mark on her arm and saying, <em>“Sakata-kun, was it? I’m so glad I found my soulmate! I’ve known for years my husband wasn’t my ‘one.’ Now that I know it’s you, please take me to bed right away. Ravish my curvaceous, honey-scented body…”</em></p>
<p class="Erindefault">The pleasant fantasy bursts, replaced with the familiar face of a not-married, not-older, not-woman, mayo/tobacco-smelling guy with a completely flat chest. Gintoki’s <em>someone else</em> just <em>had to be</em> the Demon Vice Chief of the Shinsengumi. How irritating.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">They found out just a few hours after waking up with the marks that the marks are meaningless, but Gintoki still spent an entire afternoon and evening thinking about <em>soulmates</em> and drew the conclusion he and Hijikata might actually be soulmates.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Even worse than the earthshattering conclusion he drew is how he acted on it. He <em>should</em> have turned to his faith. He is a devout practitioner of SugarAlcoholPachinkoism. However, that day, he failed to eat an entire box of Black Thunder, drink an entire bottle of whisky, or play pachinko until his pockets were bereft of so much as lint. Instead of closely adhering to his religion’s sacred tenets, he sneaked onto Shinsengumi grounds and said to the Vice Chief a bunch of really embarrassing, flowery words about being alone and how it was nice to have a soulmate for a day.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">But wait… It gets worse! It gets a <em>lot </em>worse, because before he sneaked back out of the Shinsengumi compound, he <em>kissed</em> Hijikata. It was just a quick kiss on the lips. He didn’t go for more, but not because he was afraid of being punched in the nutsack. No, no. The reason he didn’t go for more is that he’s a level-headed guy, a good decision-maker, the model of maturity.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">He then went home, absolutely not blushing furiously and bearing a stupid, lovestruck grin that he didn’t notice until it was pointed out by the Neanderthal girl living with him.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">“<em>Eww</em>, Gin-chan. Why are you smiling like that? Gross. Did you finally kiss Mayora or something<em>?” </em>she had said.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">He told her to shut up and smacked her on the back of the head. She kicked him, he took away the snack she was eating and ran away, she chased him around the apartment, and they fought like they always do. It took his mind off the day and wore him out.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">He slept soundly that night, convinced that his strange thoughts would fade in a few days along with the mark on his arm, but the former didn’t fade. For the past two weeks, the thoughts in his head have been roughly this:</p>
<p class="Erindefault">
  <em>…soulmates soulmates soulmates soulmates chocolate cake soulmates soulmates ooh someone dropped a 500-yen coin soulmates soulmates soulmates…</em>
</p>
<p class="Erindefault">It’s making him fucking crazy. He needs a break.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Unfortunately, he has read the latest issue of <em>JUMP </em>six times already, and because he repented of his sin of omission by attending daily worship at the pachinko parlor, he has drained himself of all funds, including the 500-yen coin he picked up in the street, and he has no money to spend on entertainment.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">No, wait… That’s not true. He has two Unified Cinemas movie passes! How did he forget?</p>
<p class="Erindefault">He grabs one of the passes, puts his boots on, and heads out, whistling merrily as he walks to the movie theater on a beautiful spring day. He should be at the theater by noon, and they’ll hopefully have a good selection of mid-day showings.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">His dream of spending two hours not thinking about the concept of <em>soulmates</em> goes up in cigarette smoke when he gets to the box office. Approaching the ticket window at the same time is the last person he wanted to see, his former fake soulmate, Hijikata Toushirou.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">With a sneer, the officer declares, “<em>Tch</em>. I’m leaving.”</p>
<p class="Erindefault">“Wait!!” Gintoki says, reaching out a desperate hand. He doesn’t understand why he’s panicking like an idiot at the thought of Hijikata leaving. He manages to recover from his overreaction by putting his hand back at his side and calmly reasoning, “You don’t need to leave. We might not even be going to the same movie.”</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Hijikata looks at him like he’s stupid as hell. Pointing up at the marquee, he says, “We are definitely going to the same movie. There’s only one showing starting in the next three hours.”</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Gintoki’s eyes follow to where the finger is pointing and reads the sign. Oh. He hadn’t had a chance to look yet, so he didn’t realize. He argues, “Well, it’s not like we have to sit together.”</p>
<p class="Erindefault">With a hefty sigh and an eye-roll, Hijikata tacitly agrees. He steps up to the box office window and redeems one of the movie passes Gintoki gave him.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Gintoki redeems his movie pass and follows Hijikata into the theater. There aren’t a lot of other people, so they have their choice of seating. Hijikata sits audience left, about halfway back. Gintoki sits audience right, a little farther back.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">The previews do nothing to keep Gintoki’s mind from doing its usual <em>soulmates soulmates soulmates</em> thing. He prays the movie is more entertaining. The marquee said <em>Endgame, </em>but he has never heard of it. He doesn’t know what it’s about. He hopes it isn’t a three-hour sequel to a series of twenty-plus movies.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">It starts, and it does in fact seem like a sequel, but Gintoki isn’t particularly confused about what’s happening, and he’s enjoying himself. The movie has everything a good movie should have: action, drama, comedy, attractive people in skin-tight outfits, and good acting. For some reason, Tony Stark sounds like Hattori Zenzou, and Steve Rogers sounds like Kintoki.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Three hours and one minute pass by quickly, thanks to the movie’s high entertainment value, and when it’s over, Gintoki is not crying. Not at all. He looks across the theater and sees that Hijikata is not crying either. They’re both dabbing at their eyes with their kimono sleeves for some other reason.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Hijikata heads for the exit, and Gintoki quickly follows. He hates to admit it, but he knows exactly why he didn’t want Hijikata to leave before the movie started and why he’s so eager to catch up to him now. It’s because he can’t get the man off his mind. He wants to try to find out if Hijikata has also spent a fortnight tortured by the concept of <em>soulmates</em>.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">He catches up to him in the street and is met with another <em>“Tch.”</em></p>
<p class="Erindefault"><em>“Hijikata-kun, do you know if there were some other movies I should have watched before that one?” </em>Gintoki means to ask, but the words that come out of his mouth are, “Hijikata-kun, do you believe we are soulmates?”</p>
<p class="Erindefault">The question evokes every negative emotion Hijikata is capable of. For the past two weeks, he has thought about nothing but <em>soulmates</em>.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">The evening Gintoki kissed him, he fooled himself into thinking he had reached a state of zen on the topic, ready to see how things go and not worry over it. Then he fell asleep, and he dreamed about Gintoki.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">In his dream, he wasn’t too slow to react. Gintoki kissed him on the lips, and he put his hand on the back of Gintoki’s head and pulled him in closer, gnawing on his bottom lip until he opened his mouth, and deliberately dragging his tongue across Gintoki’s, making sure every taste bud received some love.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Oh, but the dream by no means stopped there. Stupid dream!Hijikata broke the kiss and pulled dream!Gintoki by the hand into his room. Dream!Hijikata then laid down on his back on his futon and gave dream!Gintoki bedroom eyes. Dream!Gintoki, being as much of an idiot as Gintoki is in real life, accepted the wordless invitation, straddling dumb slut dream!Hijikata, slowly peeling off every layer of clothing, painstakingly placing kisses along each newly exposed section of skin.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Once dream!Hijikata the harlot was nude, dream!Gintoki quickly stripped off his own clothing. Then that dumbass laid down on his side next to dream!Hijikata, but upside down. In turn, dumbass dream!Hijikata rolled onto his side to face him, and they proceeded to sixty-nine.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Dream!Hijikata came with dream!Gintoki’s dick stuffed in his mouth, which woke Hijikata up, at which point he realized he had made a white, sticky mess inside his boxers. As someone who always swore to the heavens he was a card-carrying heterosexual, it was the most mortifying thing Hijikata has ever experienced.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">He dreaded seeing Gintoki again. He hoped it wouldn’t happen, but his luck isn’t that good. Every single day, he either saw Gintoki and/or one or both of the Yorozuya kids, or he would hear someone mention Gintoki. Each time he was reminded of Gintoki and his lewd dream about him, he would think about <em>soulmates</em>. After a couple days, his thought process was pretty much this:</p>
<p class="Erindefault">
  <em>…soulmates soulmates soulmates mayonnaise on oyako don soulmates soulmates soulmates soulmates I should have Tetsu buy me a pack of cigarettes soulmates soulmates…</em>
</p>
<p class="Erindefault">It was driving him fucking insane, so he decided to take a day off work and go to the movies to clear his mind. He worried he would run into Gintoki here, but he brushed off the idea. The fact that they constantly run into each other is just coincidence, he reassured himself.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Of course, the motherfucker was there. He was behaving unusually well, so Hijikata was able to watch the movie in peace, but he’s not in peace anymore. Gintoki has followed him and asked him the most inflammatory question ever.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">The day all that soulmates bullshit went down, Hijikata lightheartedly laughed at the notion that they might actually be soulmates, blaming such a crazy thing on the universe having a fucked-up sense of humor. Two weeks later, he has no idea how he was able to have such a carefree attitude. Maybe he was in shock from being kissed by Gintoki.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">It would be nice if he could go back to being in shock, because in his current lucid state, he can draw only one conclusion from the fact that they think alike, constantly run into each other, drive each other up a wall, and turn into an unstoppable pair of wild beasts when they fight shoulder-to-shoulder. It would be generous to say he and Gintoki <em>‘might’</em> be soulmates; he has concluded that they are the fucking dictionary definition of it.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">He stops walking and glares at Gintoki, who stops walking and looks back at him like he scared himself with his own stupid question.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Neither of them says anything for a minute.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Hijikata breaks the silence with an exasperated question. “So what if I do? What then?”</p>
<p class="Erindefault">“I was hoping you could tell me which movies I missed…” Gintoki blurts, hoping he merely imagined having asked a different question than the one he intended to.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Hijikata scrunches up his eyebrows and demands, “What?? Start making sense, or I’m walking away.”</p>
<p class="Erindefault">“Well, because, you see, I didn’t realize there might be other movies I should have watched first,” Gintoki carries on, too nervous to directly address the fact that he apparently really did accidentally ask the <em>soulmates</em> question and not the movie question, “and if there are, maybe we could watch them together, because I don’t know.” He sighs and openly shows his confusion, scratching his head. “I don’t know what comes next if we’re soulmates.”</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Hijikata’s mouth opens, and his lips sort of twitch, but he has trouble landing on something to say. “Uh…” He takes a page out of Gintoki’s book and pretends they’re mostly talking about movies. Clearing his throat, he continues, “What, uh, what comes next depends on whether you want to watch the movies in the order they were released or in the order the story takes place.” This is going ok so far, so he concludes, “Be-because if it’s story order, we’d need to start with <em>Captain America: The First Avenger, </em>but if it’s release order, we would start with <em>Iron Man.</em>”</p>
<p class="Erindefault">“Ah, uh-huh, I see. That is a difficult decision,” Gintoki says, playing along with the pretense that they aren’t having a deep conversation about what you do with the rest of your life once you’ve found your soulmate. “Maybe…maybe we could talk about it some more at an izakaya.”</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Hijikata thinks for a minute. If it’s just a conversation about the Marvel Cinematic Universe over an Asahi and tempura burdock dipped in mayonnaise, he can handle it. He nods, looking at the ground as a preventative measure, in case he’s blushing. He follows when Gintoki starts walking.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Gintoki blushes furiously and grins a stupid, lovestruck grin. If Kagura was here, she would tell him he’s being ‘gross,’ but he can’t help it; he’s happy.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">Hijikata is angry at the universe for having such a fucked-up sense of humor.</p>
<p class="Erindefault">He’s also maybe just a little bit happy.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you to everyone who said nice things about <em>Listen When the Universe Tries to Tell You Something,</em> including those who participated in its renaissance on the BGS Discord. In particular, thank you to Aziciel for commenting way back in the day and inspiring Gintoki blushing like an idiot after kissing Hijikata, and thank you to remieri for getting the sequel idea gears grinding by saying you wished you could see their movie date, even though I wrote no such thing.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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